The desktop wars

[Steven Pasternak]

Peter Gordon wrote:
> Steven Pasternak wrote:
>   
>> We aren't in the 1990's anymore. Firefox/Thunderbird are what many
>> people use under windows, so there isn't really much transition there.
>> OpenOffice works almost like M$, and even has file-format compatibility.
>>     
>
> Good. The apps are cross-platform and interact well with other apps and
> file formats. Now how does Granny User transfer her settings from
> Windows Firefox/Thunderbird/OO.org/etc. to Linux? Currently no easy way
> exists to do this (of which I am aware). By "easy" here, I want there to
> be some way to have a dialog which says "I want to transfer these
> settings/bookmarks/preferences/et al. from my Windows applications to my
> Linux installation" with clickable options for Firefox, Thunderbird,
> OpenOffice.org, Gaim) and the user could just click it. Even nice would
> be things like transferring what we could of a user's MS Outlook setup
> to the corresponding Evolution configuration or transferring a Trillian
> buddy list to Gaim, etc. It would be very difficult to ensure everything
> was transferred correctly, but I think it would really help people learn
> to use GNU/Linux further without the trouble of reconfiguring their
> client software for instant messaging, email, web browsing, etc. (Hey, a
> geek can dream, right? :o)
>
>   
My dad has linux and winxp dual booted and spent a couple of hours 
manually transfering and fighting windows, but in the end could do it 
(although you need outlook to export from its crappy format to transfer 
the emails.). Transferring the stuff from the mozilla apps was the 
easiest part. It probably wouldn't be to hard to have a program that 
checks c:\windows\profiles (or wherever windows hides its user info) for 
users and looks in c:\program files for things like mozilla and internet 
explorer, etc. and runs an import wizard. I wouldn't be surprised if 
that happened in the next few years, especially since apple is gaining 
momentum and, being freebsd at the core, would be a LOT easier to import 
from.